Apart from the obvious books that most readers of this blog will be familiar with, such as Brant Pitre’s Jesus and the Last Supper (which happens to be my, Michael, favorite book in biblical studies), I have in the course of PhD studies and writing my dissertation discovered a few very valuable studies on the Last Supper and/or the Lord’s Supper.
Gillian Feely-Harnik, The Lord’s Table: The Meaning of Food in Early Judaism and Christianity (Washington DC: Smithsonian Books, 1994; reprint The Lord’s Table: Eucharist and Passover in Early Christianity [Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981]). Imagine the implications and world of wonder that would open if I were to tell you that the Lord’s Table in the title of Feely-Harnik’s book refers primarily not to 1 Corinthians 10, but to the golden table in the Jerusalem temple or to its altar. The cultic implications for understanding NT Supper texts are considerable. And these are just some of the insights she affords.
Andrea Beth Lieber, “God Incorporated: Feasting on the Divine Presence in Ancient Judaism,” (PhD diss. Columbia University, 1998). While Lieber’s work is independent of Feely-Harnik, it richly distills much of the cultic and covenantal implications of the Jewish sacrificial system in a somewhat similar manner (for example her second chapter is “At God’s Table”) but with an added emphasis on visionary encounters with God owing to the influence of Exodus 24:11: “and they beheld God and they ate and they drank.” Lieber’s writing style is additionally engaging and I found myself consuming the entire dissertation in one sitting. It was particularly Lieber’s study that really allowed me to better exegete 1 Corinthians 10.
One frustration I’ve had in Supper research is finding a recent and thorough examination of the history of research. I found this addressed both surprisingly and appreciably in Jerome Kodell, The Eucharist in the New Testament (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1988). Obviously, since the book is dated to 1988 it is not “recent” without some qualification. I would only say that the state of Supper studies has not changed very much from the very active decade between the early seventies to early eighties. For example, the question of priority, whether Mark/Matthew or Paul/Luke, has not been resolved but only exacerbated by recent research on memory and orality. The differences seen especially in Luke’s Gospel with other accounts (such as Luke’s two cups) is really past the breaking point among researchers, and involves textual-criticism, the notoriously difficult question of Luke’s sources based on philological examination, etc. Koddell has provided a still meaningful history of research that is the clearest explanation in English of several notable German researchers who continue to influence discussion, including Hermann Patsch, Heinz Schürmann, Rudolf Pesch, etc. (I would add here that in a private discussion with Dale C. Allison Jr. in 2016 on the topic of the criteria of authenticity and the Last Supper, the very first question he posed to me was if I had considered Pesch’s work.)
While I do not consider the next researcher “hidden” by any means, there is one essay of his I came across that neatly summarizes his work on the Supper that is not as well known. While I have read and bought and read again Bruce Chilton’s A Feast of Meanings: Eucharistic Theologies from Jesus through Johannine Circles, NovTSup 72 (Leiden: Brill, 1994), he summarizes this book in the space of one essay I found very well: Bruce Chilton, “Ideological Diets in a Feast of Meanings,” Bruce Chilton and Craig A. Evans, Jesus in Context: Temple, Purity, and Restoration, AGJU 39 (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 59-89.
Additional hidden gems have been:
Kobus Petzer, “Style and Text in the Lucan Narrative of the Institution of the Lord’s Supper (Luke 22, 19b-20),” NTS 37 (1991): 113-129.
Fergus King, “Travesty or Taboo? ‘Drinking Blood’ and Revelation 17:2-6,” Neot 38.2 (2004): 303-325. Think of the implications of the following for the historicity of the Supper… Since a few recent researchers such as Andrew McGowan have argued that the Eucharist was not practiced in NT times, imagine the implications of King’s argument, that the woman who rides the beast in Revelation 17 intends to mock early Christian eucharistic worship by partaking of her own polluted anti-Eucharistic cup, evidencing a polemical travesty of the sacred cup of Christ-followers. For the parallel to work, and since its explanatory power is considerable at least prima facie, then Eucharistic worship must have been present for John’s audience. I think King is on to something here.
There are many others that have slipped through my grasp at present and I will surely follow up if there is interest among readers or enough material for another post.
Blessings,
Michael
Jesus and Paul and the New Testament 